FOOTNOTES
[1] [Letters CLI–CXLIII follow 130.]
[2] [Drowned 5th February 1805.]
[3] [The new Secretary.]
[4] [It is quite true that he did induce an American captain to smuggle him on board.]
[5] [Stoddart had retained his MSS. in Malta (for some unaccountable reason), which had disconcerted Coleridge.]
[6] [Staying at the farmhouse near the mansion of Coleorton.]
[7] T. Poole and his Friends, ii, [174–184].
[8] Religious Musings was at first called The Nativity, and sent to Charles Lamb in December 1794 as an unfinished poem. Coleridge wrote to Cottle in one of his short notes, while his first volume of Poems was being put through the press: “The Nativity is not quite three hundred lines. It has cost me much labour in polishing; more than any poem I ever wrote, and I believe it deserves it:” Cottle’s Reminiscences, p. 66. The first 158 lines, down to “This is the Messiah’s destined victory!” were probably written in the spring of 1796. Their spirit is diametrically opposed to the remainder of the poem, in which the Messiah’s victory is to be a political one.
[9] [“Even they will be necessitated to admit, completely exonerated the Jews.”—Early Recollections.]